November 5, 2005

Flight From Reality

It was an exquisite image on the front of the NYT yesterday marking the end of Ramadan. The photo was taken in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. What I couldn’t understand — and found quite ironic — however, is why the Times shied away from one of the most dramatic and troubling stories taking place at the intersection of the Western and Muslim worlds.

The International Herald Tribune, a sister paper of the Times had the story, accompanied by two prominent images, on their front page yesterday. Here in America, however, the nine days of intense rioting in Paris by African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children seems to have gone virtually unnoticed. The Times did run a schematic story on page A3, and a brief editorial. But between Friday’s edition of The Times, The Washington Post and The L.A. Times, only the latter placed the story on the front page.